Motives

"Rest assured, if motives fetched from the gospel will not kill sin, motives fetched from the law never will. "

— Charles Spurgeon    The Christian's Glorious Inventory: Sermons on 1 Corinthians

HT Of First Importance

Old and New

Here's some very clarifying insights from Tim Keller on interpreting the Old Testament from the vantage point of the New Testament. The specific context of the comments is the accusation the Christians "pick and choose" texts to condemn homosexual behavior, but the interpretive concepts apply across the board.

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” What I hear most often is “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?”

It is not that I expect everyone to have the capability of understanding that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God’s plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological advisor) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.

First of all, let’s be clear that it’s not only the Old Testament that has proscriptions about homosexuality. The New Testament has plenty to say about it, as well. Even Jesus says, in his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19:3-12 that the original design of God was for one man and one woman to be united as one flesh, and failing that, (v. 12) persons should abstain from marriage and from sex.

However, let’s get back to considering the larger issue of inconsistency regarding things mentioned in the OT that are no longer practiced by the New Testament people of God. Most Christians don’t know what to say when confronted about this. Here’s a short course on the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament:

Extreme Life Makeover

Found a great illustration on Law and Grace, using two reality TV shows (Biggest Loser and Extreme Home Makeover) at The Thinklings:

But I'm realizing that one of the draws of Biggest Loser for me is Law. Though there is often compassion and tenderness between the competitors, there is no grace regarding the results. The scale doesn't lie. I was talking to a personal trainer the other night and she likes the show as well but is horrified by the way they go about losing weight. Losing weight that fast, with brutal six hour a day workouts, is not safe. But we applaud Biggest Loser, with all its talk of "taking control of your life", "earning it", and "working your [behonkus] off". The Law can be appealing. It speaks to the drive that is in most of us to earn our own way toward our own goals through our own efforts without the help of grace.

Which brings me to Extreme Home Makeover. Oddly enough, I think that Extreme Home Makeover may be the closest picture of the Gospel in reality TV today. Have you noticed that the family being blessed is not even allowed to work on the house? And "makeover" is an understatement, to say the least. Generally, the house is completely gutted and rebuilt from the ground up.

I've thought, at times, that I would be uncomfortable as an Extreme Home Makeover blessee. I think that I would be embarrassed to not have any part in the renovation of a house that I had let, often due to my own hard circumstances, go to rot. I also might be a bit nervous about what I would see when that bus finally moved out of the way, because none of it was my doing or my plan.

My relationship with God is like that, most of the time. I want him to come in and fix my creaking floor, or repaint my bathroom, or install a new garage door opener (all, incidentally, recent needs in my actual house). His plan, and he means to complete it, is to gut the place, design a whole new floorplan, and build something Magnificent, just like He is.

It may make me uncomfortable, but it is Good News. And considering my skills in spiritual home repair, it is Very Good News.

I'm glad Jesus wants to knock down my miserable shack and build a palace -so long as He comes to live in it!

Radically Unbalanced Grace

"Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace- “don’t take it too far; keep it balanced.” The truth is, however, that a “yes grace but” posture is the kind of posture that perpetuates slavery in our lives and in the church. Grace is radically unbalanced. It has no “but”: it’s unconditional, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and undomesticated. As Doug Wilson put it recently, “Grace is wild. Grace unsettles everything. Grace overflows the banks. Grace messes up your hair. Grace is not tame. In fact, unless we are making the devout nervous, we are not preaching grace as we ought.” Grace scares us to death because in every way it wrestles control out of our hands. However much we hate law, we are more afraid of grace."

From The End Of Control Is The Beginning Of Freedom – Tullian Tchividjian: